Wednesday, August 5, 2015

KATHLEEN DRISKELL'S NEW POEMS REFLECT KENTUCKY HISTORY

Kathleen
Driskell’s Next Door To The Dead
(University Press of Kentucky)

Living next door to a grave yard, as
Driskell does in a converted country church just outside Louisville, is a good
way to glean insights into Kentucky’s historical culture. While many poems in
this volume are profound ruminations, some of the shorter ones are delightfully
pithy.

One “Epitaph,” for example, reads, “He
Never Killed a Man That Didn’t Need Killing.” Another is for Dave, who chased a
bear into a cave, “oh, bless his heart,” meaning poor Dave “really wasn’t all
that smart.”

In “The Death of the Snake Handler,” a
dying preacher has the snake’s head cut off “to show the snake / that in the
end, he was but a worm.” But the snake gets the last word: “then surrender
please, / only a worm was needed / to bring you to your knees.”

And then, for the more profound among
us, there’s the slim sea trout swimming just beneath the surface of the Irish
Sea, who from the cliff above appears to be twisting in church glass as if
“newly buried, / not yet admitted.” It makes one wonder: What God looks down
from on high waiting to digest the dead?